


foundations like silt

by cadmean



Category: Kadaver | Cadaver (2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - cosmic horrors, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post-Canon, the hotel was an eldritch abomination all along
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27314365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/pseuds/cadmean
Summary: There is a dead thing, a hungry thing, living in the depths of the hotel.
Kudos: 2





	foundations like silt

**Author's Note:**

> ...I just thought that a LOT of the early dialogue and framing (especially in the furnace tunnels...) felt like it was setting up the hotel as some sort of eldritch deity thing that Mathias and, by extension, the actors were sacrificing the guests to in lieu of being consumed themselves - but well then that didn't pan out. But I wrote fic for it anyway \o/

There is a dead thing, a hungry thing, living in the depths of the hotel.

A shadow in the cellars, a flicker in the hallways. The slightest of bumps in the rugs covering the floor, present just long enough to stumble over and disappeared the moment you’re back on your feet. It is _everywhere_ , you see; it permeates the very fabric of the hotel and everything in it—everything in it is tainted by it, stained soot-dark if not on their skin then in their very soul. It hides in the mirrors and between the windows, and if the intricate system of vents are the veins pumping air through it then the ballroom is its heart – the center, the locus, where everything ended and began.

But its hungry maw is in the basements, and it is there that everything – everyone – caught in its orbit inevitably returns to.

* * *

Mathias wakes with a pained snarl.

He’s hanging upside down, one ankle chained up high to the ceiling while the other leg dangles, caught in gravity’s useless grip. His arms are free, though he’s been hung too high to be able to reach the floor; his shirt, when he strains up to try and get his fingers wrapped around the chains holding him, is drenched with blood.

There’s a brief moment of disconnect, just there: he sees the blood and he sees the barber’s knife still sticking out from between blooddry ribs, but, for a single breath, the blood could have been anyone’s. No pain registers except the increasing strain in the muscles of his leg. No discomfort save for the slight feeling of dizziness beginning to settle over him as blood pools in his head.

And then everything clicks together, like puzzle pieces misaligned but now righted: his actors, his _family_ —betrayed him. Rakel. He should’ve suspected it, should’ve been more cautious – she’d always been a cold one, Rakel – but outright violence was something Mathias had never expected of her, and that betrayal cuts just as deep as the knife still lodged in his chest.

Rage fills his heart just as much as the metal does, for a moment—

And then it’s replaced by a bonedeep fear and a cold, sharp dread as Mathias realizes that he’s all alone in the hotel now.

That there is nobody left to help him feed the fires burning their way across the building’s very foundations.

That he’ll have to start over yet again.

* * *

The fastening in the ceiling gives way eventually. Mathias isn’t quite sure whether that’s because of him twisting around far more than a dead body ever would, or because of something else entirely—

_(fires in the foundations)_

—but he’s free at last, and as he unceremoniously crashes to the dirty tiled floor, he comes to the painful realization that he doesn’t care. He’s alive, which is more than he could say for himself only a few hours earlier, and as long as he’s breathing he can continue working towards his daughter breathing again, _too_.

The hotel is deserted as he makes his way down into the lower floors. Nobody’s stayed behind, Mathias notes with a disappointed glare, but there’s nothing he can do about that now. He’ll just have to . . . start over. It wouldn’t be the first time, but he’ll do his damn best to make sure it’ll be the last. There’s _(the crackle of ancient flames)_ not much time left now, not for him.

He’s gotten so old.

The first time around ( _when the flames were just embers_ ) the hotel had been in the ruins of Munich, and he’d killed half the city's survivors by the time the locals caught on and raided the building. They’d burnt him in the very fires he’d chosen to serve, and when he’d awoken in nothing but the ashen remains of his suit the hotel had already been in Vienna.

He’d lasted longer there – more travelers passing through the devastated city, and much easier to pick them off while keeping a low profile with those who remained behind. But eventually he’d fucked up there, too, and the local militia had come to inspect the building, and—well. Mathias had become intimately acquainted with rough tug of rope around his neck and the burning in his lungs as the air left them.

Amsterdam, Madrid, Bucharest – a slit throat, a bullet to the sternum, crushed lungs and crushed head.

But even as Mathias’d bled and choked over and over and over again, the fires in the basement, fed by countless souls over so, so many years – they’ve grown with his nurturing, and one day soon Mathias knows they’ll have grown powerful enough to grant his wish.

* * *

The basement is pristine, of course. Not clean, exactly, but empty of all the various remnants and detritus of those given to the flames – it takes energy to reset the hotel’s location, Mathias has learned over the years.

A quick check reveals that the flames are burning just as bright as ever, though, and that’s all that matters. They flicker in the furnace, leaking out from between the rusting metal doors and winding their way towards him, caressing his legs and twisting around his wrists with the most gentle sting of burning flesh. (And if there is sometimes a too-familiar face in the flames on these occasions when they’re both exhausted and drained and so desperate for that new rush of ash escaping through the chimneys, then, well. Mathias figures they can both be afforded a slip of concentration, and if the wisps of flame caressing his chest and holding him tight are the price he has to pay to see that face with at least a semblance of life returned to it, then he will readily pay it.)

A burning flock of cinder settles on his cheek, just underneath his eye. It stings, but it’s a pain he’s long since grown accustomed to.

(It is a benediction of sorts, he sometimes thinks. A blessing.)

Only when it finally loses its glow and turns to ash does Mathias lift up a finger to brush it away.

* * *

He doesn’t know the city he sees outside the windows, and he doesn’t know the people already cautiously peering towards the hotel from down below, but what Mathias does know is this:

There is a crackle of fire in the back of his mind, and as it burns its commandments into him it speaks with the voice of his dead daughter.


End file.
